Bg2 Malchor Harpell
bbear
Member Posts: 1,180
Is anyone annoyed at Malchor for stealing your hard earned equipments? He'll show up eventually to take back Drizzt and friends' equipments. If he catches you the second time for possessing Drizzt's items, he'll cast mass imprisonment on the entire party.
It's nearly impossible to kill him. And even if you kill him once, he will spawn again at a different map or on the same map but at a later time.
Here is how I work around this:
Shapechange: Mindflayer+Timestop
or
Shapechange: Mindflayer+Improved Haste
He spawns once per map. If his corpse is still on the map, he cant spawn again on the same map. After entering Suldanessellar, he doesnt spawn anymore.
Now I can happily use Drizzt's Items w/o being bother.
It's nearly impossible to kill him. And even if you kill him once, he will spawn again at a different map or on the same map but at a later time.
Here is how I work around this:
Shapechange: Mindflayer+Timestop
or
Shapechange: Mindflayer+Improved Haste
He spawns once per map. If his corpse is still on the map, he cant spawn again on the same map. After entering Suldanessellar, he doesnt spawn anymore.
Now I can happily use Drizzt's Items w/o being bother.
4
Comments
If you really want Drizzt's gear, just remove him via a mod. Not sure why you would, though, it's not very good in BG2.
Then another powerful famous character would come along.
That said it would be nice if they could fix those scripting issues.
So, if you really want that gear, just use a mod to remove Malchor. Easy.
Therefore, if we kill him, ok people should go after my party to revenge, justice, retribution... whatever.
But an instand death issue for something that isn't even story breaking (as attack the Shadow Thiefs in chapter 2 or 3 before dealing with Bodhi), that's ridiculous, this isn't something for mod, it's something to be vanilla fixed, otherwise why ppl are asking for BG2 EE, just mod it!
Gnasher is better for part-druids then most other weapons in the game due to the shear amount of damage it deals, and blackblood is more useful for the +3 stuff, since it can at least interrupt through stoneskins..and neither of Drizzt's weapons can hit +4 or above, so...so..not a whole lot of benefit in the late game. And you only get the oppertunity to get them near the end of the game anyway, meaning you'll likely have equal or better options.
His armor isn't worth consideration AT ALL, simply due to the fact that it has been grossly out classed by every armor type, both in terms of AC and benefits.
Aegis Fang is just a generic +3 hammer, since it's only throwable when Wulfgar is using it, so that's no help. Cattie Brie's bow is about the only half-decent thing that comes out that whole encounter.
And I refuse to use the Solaufein mod (If I bother at all, I just add him manually), since it doesn't actually have THE Solaufien...it has some random drow named Solaufein. Since the REAL Solaufein is a level 12 single class fighter (17 str, 16 dex, 15 Con, 12 int, 14 Wis, 13 cha, LN), that uses a Drow Longsword+3 and Shield+3, and has already made peace with his past and moved on, not a dual-wielding CG F/M Emo-pansey, who whines more then Aerie about his past, and takes over the storyline ALMOST as badly as a certain jailbait paladin that shan't be named (They basically pulled a Novel, and totally ignored the character's fairly well defined personality and instituted their own Drizzt-clone mary-sue in place.....yes he does good programming, but his writing is crap).
Ps: I see no problem in edit Solafein status, cos for a leader of the melee academy, Solafein stats really sucks.
For drizzt items, sometimes people want to roleplay without a fucking engine script telling them that if they do that again, they're going to be punished with an unavoidable fatal death.
He's still stated properly for an NPC however (and IS actually stronger then the generic drow fighters). And at no point during the process of you working together does he ever employ a magic spell, not even during the only battle he actually fights in or later if you decide to kill him....Dimension door is the only magic he is ever shown using, which also happens to be one of the common powers of a drow house badge (as well as levitation, and some others), that a captain of the house's fighters would likely have.
That would be the only situation in which you'd have a space free for a new party member.
As it is, my first BG2:EE team is going to seriously screw with the script, because with a new evil thief in play I won't need Imoen or Yoshimo at all. Should be interesting to see how that part of the game plays out...
Also, I do agree that Solaufein is far from implemented perfectly. I personally tend to SK him anyway to whatever I need, but it does indeed not make much sense to have him be a F/M. I do however find his personality quite okay; he is a drow after all, likely very old and very learned. It is not too far-fetched for him to be as poetic (and "emo") as he is, especially given how he's had to suppress it for so long. Finally having a chance to live things out can easily result in overdoing it a little.
Though you'll have to do it every time he appears ^^
Obviously, that's an RP argument, not a practical one.
@Lord_Tansheron, the problem with Solafein, is that his behavior as an modded NPC is totally opposite to his behavior in Ush Natha (even after we reveal to him that our party is from the surface), if there's something that Solafein is, that thing is resolute.
(Also the beholder city, mind-flayer city, and the two liches you can run into might permanently leave you a party member or two short, depending on difficulty or happenstance, so it's not impossible you'd have a free slot, especially for the RPers who are, GENERALLY, somewhat averse to reloading, unless it's a TPK. (I've personally never been imprisioned, by non-demiliches, but someone people have apparently, so it COULD happen, and depending on your level you won't have much access to freedom...as well as risk of chunking via stone, disintergration, or just outright killing you, at core or higher difficulty).
I think Garren Windspear's daughter was supposed to be joinable, as another paladin npc.
Imeon wasn't one, but ended up getting put back in due to overwhelming support from fans. (Yoshimo is a partial example...he does technically join the party, but his intended questline and ToB sub-plot were cut and weren't slated to begin until after Spellhold).
There were several more planned for ToB (Back when it was supposed to be a full 3rd game), but...well..we all know how that went. They didn't get out of the "well we planned to add more but..." stage.
I always got the impression that Coran was intent to become re-joinable in BG2, we find him at the chapter 7, in the high forest (married with Safana). Safana try to backstab the party and end dead (not by the party action or intent) and we have a chance to save Coran. His banter when we save him are a bit ridiculous, and i believe also that some content for him was also cut. But it's just a feeling with him.
(Didn't stop Edwin, which alters pretty much all dialog that occurs from that point onward, if you rush through the rest of the game to prevent the normal curing phase of the questline, complete with a full 2nd voice set, along with several strings of banters across a BUNCH of party members). So it's not without precedence.
Though as mentioned, it was an idea of further NPCs they considered. Sola was the closest one to being implemented before shat starting hitting the fan (It was most likely caused since they transitioned staff over to work on ToB before SoA was finalized and came back to bite them when things started falling behind schedule).